Hey, everyboooody. It seems like it is time for X-Men movie
number eleven-ty or so. So, I thought this was a good opportunity to run through one of the most famous attributes of the X-Men, dying and coming back to life. So, this is going to be a quick rundown of that history, sticking mostly to the Marvel 616 universe. (May it rest in peace.) One of the first oopsy-daisy-not-deads was Professor X himself, who dies in an explosion during battle. But uh, no, turns out the professor had arranged for a shape-shifting mutant named Changeling to impersonate him, so it was actually
Changeling that died. During House of M, the Scarlet Witch basically wishes him out of existence, and obviously that didn't stick. And during the Avengers VS. X-Men storyline, Xavier goes into battle with Phoenix, Cyclops, and Emma Frost, dying in the ensuing Phoenix flames. We even see him in the afterlife, later, when the X-Men go into it to rescue Nightcrawler. So he's dead, but also part of his psyche is lodged into the Red Skull, so only sort of? And then of course there is my bae, Nightcrawler. Oh my God, I just said "bae" and I'm in my 30s. Well anyway, he only died once. So there's this mutant named Hope, who may-or-may-not be some kind of Jean Grey daughter/clone... whatever. Anyway, she's important, so, during the Second Coming event, Nightcrawler dies to save her. He still helped out while dead because he is the best. When Wolverine is possessed by a demon called the Hellverine, (...yeah) Nightcrawler enters his friend's mind from beyond to help him drive out the invader. But was it him, or a figment of Wolverine's imagination? We don't know! But probably it was him. But when Azazel invades the afterlife, Nightcrawler gets bored of being dead, picks up a pirate hat and sword, and takes control of a ghost pirate ship. It's actually pretty awesome. And comes back to life by creating a body out of smushed-together demon parts who are also his minions now. Unlike Nightcrawler, who only has one death and resurrection under his belt, Psylocke has several. Psylocke, who was born a British white lady, had a body-switch with a Japanese ninja named Kwannon. And her original white lady body died of this legacy virus. And that is why she is a Japanese body with a white lady's soul in it, and also she took the name "Lady Mandarin" ...despite being Japanese. There was also an incident where she very nearly died because of Sabretooth, but we're not going to count that one
because she didn't QUITE die, she just ALMOST died. She died YET AGAIN while protecting Rogue and Beast from a villain named Vargas, only to be resurrected a year later by her brother, Jamie, who reached back in time and prevented her spirit from entering the afterlife, so that's like a technical almost not death? Anyway. The legacy virus was Marvel's 90s HIV
allegory, for better or worse. Another casualty of the legacy virus was Colossus, who sacrificed himself nobly to release the cure for the legacy virus into the air, which could only be made airborne with the death of its first user into the world. Such noble! So, that's that? Actually no! Joss Whedon wanted Colossus back for his Astonishing X-Men series. So it turns out that this evil alien named Ord had stolen Colossus' body right after his death, replaced it with a duplicate body, and that was cremated in his place. And then he resurrected the real deal. As for Magneto, we got to go WAY back, all the way back to the Asteroid M incident. He appears to be dead here, but nope, he survived that, and he popped up months later, having been encased in a protective shell. Years later, we see him die as the mutant nation of Genosha was laid to waste, so then he's gone for a while. Turns out, nope! He used that as an opportunity to infiltrate the X-Men by assuming the identity of a guy named Xorn. And after revealing himself and killing Jean Grey, he himself is killed AGAIN. But no!!! Marvel was not thrilled with the direction this book was taking, and reversed it basically immediately. Turns out that WASN'T Magneto, but actually a guy named Xorn, who THOUGHT he was Magneto, except that there is also a REAL guy named Xorn who is this Xorn's brother, and he was also being held captive somewhere. Two Xorns... which is two Xorns more than we need. You know what? Forget it. Magneto's fine. He started a new mutant group back on the ruins of Genosha with his old buddy Xavier. Because the real Magneto would never genocide... anyone. Storm died in a plane crash. Only, nope, her death was faked by villains named Nanny and Orphan-Maker. They happened to have on-hand a high-tech android replica of Storm's corpse, and it was also designed by Tony Stark...? Uh, ok. This was all done with the intention of regressing Storm to childhood, BT-dubs. Anyway, the real deal pops up a couple issues later, now plus amnesia. Storm died AGAIN when they ALL died! Dazzler, Longshot, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Psylocke, Rogue, Havok, AND Madelyne Pryor, who was originally her own person but then it turns out she was like a clone of Jean Grey- you know what? We're just not gonna go there. All died during the battle in Dallas versus the Adversary. They had to sacrifice their souls to stop the thing, but then an ally named Roma used magic and brought them back because she could. But they all have to pretend to be dead for a while. #reasons But everyone, namely Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler, thought that they were dead, and so those two went off and formed Excalibur, which was awesome. That was one of the times that Wolverine died. And if you've watched the Daredevil TV series, you know that "the Hand" is like a mysterious group of ninjas that returns people from the dead but evil. That is a thing in the comics. They did this to both Wolverine and Northstar, but they both got better. And like Xavier, Wolverine is dead presently. His death even got its own miniseries. Prior to Death of Wolverine, a virus turned off Wolverine's healing factor. So after having been healing-factor-less for a while, he self-sacrificially- are we sensing a theme here? Dies from being covered in adamantium and then suffocating from it. Self-sacrifice and a beautiful metaphor sunset. I'm sure he won't be back. And of course, cliche of cliches, Phoenix. Jean Grey was originally Marvel Girl until the day she sacrifices herself for the lives of the other X-Men, ostensibly dying but then immediately returning as Phoenix, with a new, sexy outfit and fabulous, voluminous hair. That was fun, but some of the Marvel heads felt she was too powerful, so along comes the word-destroying Dark Phoenix, who once again has to die, so she sacrifices herself, more for permanent this time. So aside from some Jean-a-likes, she's gone for more than a decade. But it turns out that this wasn't Jean. Phoenix Force actually placed Jean in a protective cocoon on the bottom of Jamaica Bay, and that Phoenix was actually a Phoenix Force hearing Jean's cry and her feelings and her passion and love for her friends and it wanted to see what this whole being human thing was about so it put the original Jean into a pod at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. So Dark Phoenix was a clone... duplicate, like- like it was Jean, and it wasn't. So it's more accurate to say that Jean didn't get resurrected so much as there were two, and one died and one didn't, and also inherited copy A's memories. During Grant Morrison's New X-Men, she assumes again the powers of the Phoenix Force, now under her complete control, only to be killed by Magneto (who actually wasn't Magneto, as we discussed) and who was then beheaded by Wolverine. That wasn't quite the end of it. In X-Men Phoenix Endsong, the Phoenix resurrects Jean for one hot second again, but it doesn't quite stick, and she moves on to a higher plane of existence and is generally self-sacrificing some more. And that is definitely our big theme with the whole X-Men dying and then coming back to life thing. Self-Sacrifice means you're Jesus so it's not permanent. X-Men continuity is convoluted and hack-and-slash and bendy and timey-whimey because there's so many characters and so many creators butting heads as to who should go in what direction. Are there any X-Men characters that I didn't mention in the episode? Feel free to list them in the comments and we will see you next time with a full episode. Be careful about your self sacrifice. Good night, and good luck.
